Competitive Stage Designs

This is a topic for pre-deciding some competitive stages on the roster, and coming up with simple layouts that could then be assigned to stages. If we set aside between 10-15 of these, the rest of the roster can be designed however the stage designer wants. The idea here is also not to force simplistic designs onto stages that have more potential than that. Rather, we want to give these designs to stages that really couldn't have done much else anyway. Lastly, we should try to avoid simple designs that are too similar, like Dreamland/Battlefield/Yoshi's Story/Fountain of Dreams from Melee.

Existing/Planned competitive designs:This list doesn't include stages that are planned to get a redesign or counterpick legality, only neutrals.

1. Final Destination2. Battlefield3. Planet's Core4. District Court5. Fountain of Dreams (Using Melee design with the top platform moving as well between it's usual height and a lower height)6. Pokemon Colosseum (This will likely have banned transitions, but hazard switching would make it neutral)

I would also consider Rice Beach and Shadow Moses Island to be borderline.

Designs

I have two designs to start off discussion.

1. Inverted Battlefield: It's like Battlefield, but switch the platform heights. You could also look at SSF2's Mirror Chamber for reference

2. Smashville: The Brawl design, I would like to see return somewhere.

3.

4. Opera House?

_________________Perfect HellSSBC Head Character BalancerSSBC ProgrammerSSBC Back Room Founder

how about forget about trying to make a fangame tourney friendly and just focus on making all characters fair instead.

its not like anyone will take Crusade that seriously anyway.

Character balancing is actually for competitive play more so than casual. In casual play, Brawl is actually somewhat balanced, but far from it competitively.

And also, did I not say we should only do this for stages that couldn't be much more than simple anyway? I'm not seeing the problem with planning stage designs for stages that fit a specific criteria to begin with. Case in point: Fountain of Dreams. That's likely to have a super simple design to it, are you saying it's bad to design it ahead of time?

_________________Perfect HellSSBC Head Character BalancerSSBC ProgrammerSSBC Back Room Founder

If you really want, you can think of this as "Minimalist Stage Designs" instead. I don't know what you guys have against competitive stages, especially when we are talking about 12 out of 120. You act as if this is actually taking away from your gameplay experience, despite the fact that these are actually the stages preferred by most players, including casuals. It's not like you can't play on a stage because you're casual and it's legal in tournaments. Despite comments like what i'm seeing here so far, it's ironic that almost all casual players will name FD as one of their favorite stages. So, how about people actually come up with minimalist designs that are unique and can be used here? Stages like FoD and others will likely need them.

_________________Perfect HellSSBC Head Character BalancerSSBC ProgrammerSSBC Back Room Founder

I moreso mean its kinda stupid to try planning these things ahead of time.

Just pick competetive stages from the group when they're all done

Well, this is only the neutrals right now, as in totally minimalist. Counterpicks will just happen naturally by stage design (and there are already examples of that in game, such as Halberd). I'm also only looking to use stages that we already know we want to have simpler designs on them (ex. FoD). Say that only ends up at 8 of them, then that's fine, we'll probably end up with more later on anyway naturally. So the idea of this thread is basically just to brainstorm basic minimalist designs and critique them to be unique from eachother, then those designs are here and available for later use. It will help avoid things like our current Battlefield -> Mute City while also helping to make sure us competitive guys actually DO get into the 10-15 range of stages, instead of just ending up with a roster filled to the brim with gimmicky stages and no hazard switch.

Currently, this thread is for showing designs you've come up with for simplistic stages OR suggesting stages off of the main roster that you think should be given this type of design.

Smashing Bowsaj wrote:

Is it possible for a competitive stage to have slopes? Because if it is, then maybe this design could be used...

Slopes can be ok, just kept to a minimum as they do tend to mess up projectile play. In the case of this design, it will work well to balance out the presence of a campy stage in the neutrals, Final Destination.

_________________Perfect HellSSBC Head Character BalancerSSBC ProgrammerSSBC Back Room Founder

I'm not sure what we want out of that stage, I don't particularly remember the location. If no one objects, that could simply be a new background and aesthetic for Smashville. Although we may want to do other things with it.

_________________Perfect HellSSBC Head Character BalancerSSBC ProgrammerSSBC Back Room Founder

Would anyone be opposed to changing Fountain of Dreams Melee design to the inverted battlefield platform arrangement? Moving platforms could also stay, though they would no longer go into the floor because the platforms are higher up at default.

_________________Perfect HellSSBC Head Character BalancerSSBC ProgrammerSSBC Back Room Founder

I prefer the inverted design as well. The only difference competitively between BF and melee FoD is that on FoD the blastlines are much shorter except for the floor, which is painstakingly large and laughs at you as you fail to recover to the stage. And FoD is a pretty small stage.

I prefer the inverted design as well. The only difference competitively between BF and melee FoD is that on FoD the blastlines are much shorter except for the floor, which is painstakingly large and laughs at you as you fail to recover to the stage. And FoD is a pretty small stage.

There are a dozen more differences.The moving platforms are at much lower heights than the BF platforms and the stage overall is much more condensed. The fact that there's a huge column under the middle of the stage (and it's also bowl-like going down from the ledges) means characters who have walljumps or Zairs can recover much more easily. The differing platform heights and occasional lack of one or both of the moving platforms also changes how both characters have to approach each other in most cases.

I would propose that rather than inverting the design, just make all three platforms able to move and have a slightly larger range so that at some points it has the inverted design but most of the time it looks like the original Melee design.Like the left platform will move from it's normal Melee height down into the ground, back up to normal height, up to the top platform height, back down to Melee height, back into the ground, etc, the right platform will follow the same pattern but on a slightly different timer, and the middle platform will change from a Melee height platform to its normal position at the top.

The bowl shape and the moving platforms actually change a lot about the stage's gameplay, it's a pretty big difference. Big enough that FoD is considered the most neutral smash stage of them all, not BF. On another note, FoD is only slightly smaller than BF, so no it's not that small of a stage.

I'm ok with the moving top platform thing.

_________________Perfect HellSSBC Head Character BalancerSSBC ProgrammerSSBC Back Room Founder

The pitfall is usually shied away from for competitive stages, because of Ness/Lucas recoveries if for only one reason. If it is wide enough that they have plenty of room to work with, however, then it is easier to get away with it.

Then the problem becomes stage size ordinarily, but this is crusade and stages here are larger than console stages on average so that should be excusable as well. This design would likely be a counterpick stage since a camping character would be able to stick to one side fairly easily because there's only one really safe way to approach either side. Characters with meteor smashes can abuse the platform as well, falling through and landing easy gimps on characters attempting to recover from within the pitfall.

Personally I like the design, but I wouldn't call it a completely neutral stage either. I don't know if this thread is for neutral stages only, but I would at least consider this design legal.

That pitfall is huge enough to not mess with recoveries, no issue there. It's still abusable with meteor camping or pillar camping as a whole, but yeah it's a cool design that could probably be counterpick. I'll add it to the OP.

As for the Opera House suggestion, I have no idea.

_________________Perfect HellSSBC Head Character BalancerSSBC ProgrammerSSBC Back Room Founder